Print shops are typically medium or large scale facilities capable of supplying printing services to meet a variety of customer demands. For example, print shops are often used to print documents for mass-mailing (e.g., customer bills, advertisements). Because print shops engage in printing on a large scale, their customer base is usually varied. Print shop customers may therefore include both large institutional clients (e.g., credit card companies), and small customers (e.g., small businesses).
Print shops are generally arranged to print incoming jobs from customers in a way that is economical and yet fast. Thus, print shops often include high-volume printers capable of printing incoming jobs quickly and at high quality. Print shops also typically include post-printing devices (e.g., stackers, staplers, cutters, binders) that are used to process the printed documents of each job. Because print shops serve a variety of customers, they are often tasked with processing jobs that have varying printing formats, delivery dates, and media requirements. Print shops therefore often use a centralized print server that coordinates activity between printers and other devices of the print shop.
Along with the print data itself, a print job may include a Job Definition Format (JDF) job ticket describing how the print data for the job should be processed (e.g., what print media to use, what ink to use, whether to bind, staple, or stack the job). While it remains useful for a customer to generate JDF job tickets on a print job by print job basis, the process is not optimally efficient when a customer submits many print jobs. The customer has to generate new job tickets each time a new print job is created, which can be time-consuming. Customers therefore continue to look for systems that streamline the creation of JDF job tickets for print jobs.